Given the continued miniaturization of electronic components, portable electronic devices are being produced that are increasingly capable of complex functions. Accessing these functions often requires the electronic devices to have a large amount of external surface area dedicated to interactive components, such as input keys and buttons, displays, speakers and ports. In order to accommodate these external features while still maintaining their portable size, however, current devices have adapted configurations in which the device can be placed in a compact state with limited functionality, or an extended state with additional functionality.
Examples of such configurations are slider and flip-type phones, in which two separate casings of the phone are joined together by sliding and flipping hinges, respectively. These hinges allow the device to generally remain in a relatively compact state, and to expand by sliding or flipping the separate casings to reveal additional external components—usually keyboards, keypads or additional displays. However, the hinges used to achieve these configurations are generally limited in their complexity due to cost and size considerations. As a result, there are many expanded configurations that, although desirable for certain portable applications, cannot be realized using current portable hinges.
In addition, current portable electronic devices do not lend themselves to standalone applications. Specifically, portable electronic media playing devices do not generally come equipped with adequate speakers for listening to media audio. Instead such devices require headphones or external docking stations in order to generate ambient audio suitable for a small room or office setting. As a result, these devices are ill-suited for individual media and music playback without the aid of external components.